January has probably been the busiest month in my entire life. No kidding! Constant work, personal projects, assignments, and very little free time to myself. But I am happy to say I have enjoyed all of it!

Since December
Since my last life update last month, I have had two coursework results back from my Computer Graphics and Tool Development for Computer Games modules. The former was a 2D OpenGL scene demonstration where we had to sample OpenGL objects and techniques and demonstrate them – from Vector Array Objects to hierarchical modelling. The demo at the time went well, and I got 88% in the end! The latter was building a Python missile command game clone with the Pygame engine and developing a small physics simulator called “Marble Madness” with a lecturer-developed engine (PGE). I had 90% on that one. So I’m happy with my performance last term to say the least!

Computer Graphics
For the second term, this module now focuses on 3D rendering in OpenGL and 3D modelling with Autodesk 3DS Max. Things have continued to go well this term, and 3D modelling is actually more fun than I imagined! It has been useful for my group project in another module as well! The programming side is obviously interesting, but we are still in the opening weeks and have not done a lot of programming for OpenGL 3D yet.

Tool Development for Computer Games
Whilst I don’t have anything against Python, the module is a lot more interesting for me this term now that we are starting to do C# GUI programming with XAML. Whilst I have done a few WinForms projects before, WPF is something I have never touched before! The coursework looks like a nice challenge too, which is to build a game level designer for a tile-based game. We are given the game and its source code and have to build the designer based on the code ourselves!

Data Structures & Algorithms With Object Oriented ProgrammingThis module recently had a coursework due on the 12th, which was the process scheduler assignment I talked about in a post back around late-December. Basically, we were given a public API to conform to and told to fill in the blanks in C++. My scheduler ended up being a multi-level queue with a custom algorithm that creates a cycle to prevent blocking (the act of higher priority items stopping lower priority items from being processed completely). The scheduler creates a cycle in which each level of priority (from 1 to 10) gets a certain amount of attention. Higher priorities get more attention than lower ones in the cycle, but the lowers still gets *some* attention rather than none.

Other than the coursework, this term has also taken up a slightly different theme. We are now covering different design and strategy patterns to OO programming. Whilst they certainly require a bit more thought to understand, one of the two we have learnt so far has already came in handy with my web work! The observer pattern, which states the relationship between a subject (essentially some hub) and its observers (dependencies like clients), is basically the same principle of the way I’m developing this small social network in PHP for my portfolio.

Professionalism: “Project FallingStar”Once again, the largest and most impressive thing I am involved with at University. My team has made significant progress and whilst we are far from having a complete game, the game is looking rather beautiful already! Besides defacto leadership and physics programming, I have also undertaken tasks for 3D modelling and special effects for the game. Like the last time I wrote about this, I have some little peaks for you:

Personal projects
I have also made a fair bit of progress with personal things as well. My Star Trek fan site, Path to 2265, remains a top priority for me and many improvements in the back-office have been made. The website’s search engine programming has transformed into a mature, secure and robust platform that allows the website to provide intelligent and weighted search results, whilst also providing internal benefits by allowing pages to be more dynamic and use the website’s database more. I’ve also been working on actual front-end content as well with Chapter 2 being released within a month or so and several more ships added; Polaris has a completed database entry, DY-732 has its specs mostly ironed out, and an upcoming design is due for completion soon:

As of last Friday, I’m now off university for a few weeks. I thought it might be neat if I make a post about what I have done these last few weeks for university, so here goes!

“Project FallingStar”…is the single biggest thing I have been involved with this term. For the Professionalism module, we were put into groups (four, five (as it is for ours) or six people) and tasked with planning and building a 3D game from scratch whilst still learning the engine we have to use (Unity). I am pleased to say I have thoroughly enjoyed the project so far! The idea for our game is that the player builds modular space probes to send out on exploration and defence missions in the solar system. Despite initial doubts that our idea was too ambitious for a bunch of UNI students, our team (designated Team 1) is working well and our recent demo was well-received! My main contributions to the team have been physics programming (producing the gravity model) and leadership (defacto, since it was something that I naturally slipped into rather than being designated).

“A little peak” – credit to team member Luke Probert, who developed this splashscreen!

OpenGL courseworkThis coursework was also fun. In the Computer Graphics module, we have been learning the basics of OpenGL and the assessment was to compile a 2D OpenGL scene that makes use of advanced OpenGL features (compared to just using immediate mode rendering) such as Vector Buffer Objects (and Vertex Array Objects), hierarchical modelling, and transformations. Whilst I have to wait for my grade, the demonstration I have to my lecturer was well-received!

Python + PygameThis coursework was interesting ’cause I both did and did not enjoy it. The coursework was split into two tasks; building a missile command game clone with Pygame and then developing a small physics sim “Marble Madness” with a lecturer-created engine. Both tasks had their merits, which for me was mainly the fun of programming. What I did not like was that we could only develop the second part on Linux since the engine (PGE) is Linux-only. Whilst I have Linux at home nor is Linux THE problem, there is really only one computer lab in the university (where I work better at than home) that has Linux. This meant I could not always be guaranteed a computer since the lab was in high demand. I was even asked to leave for another class on two occassions, with can really be inconveniencing!

So yeah, that’s what I have been up to academically! In my spare time, I am continuing the development of Path to 2265 as another personal priority. I’ve recently made some huge underlying changes that I’ll be posting about this week!